One of the little known facts of Warren Lamb’s career was his close involvement with Judith Kestenberg and the synergy of ideas generated by their long association. In the early 1950s each had begun to study movement independently. Kestenberg was observing infants in maternity wards, recording their movements with EMG-like tracings.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Lamb was observing adults and recording their movements with Laban’s effort and space notation.

The two were introduced by Irmgard Bartenieff in the late 1950s. Both Bartenieff and Kestenberg studied observation with Lamb, and it was Lamb who identified Kestenberg’s tracings as changes in flow, rather than effort as Kestenberg originally believed. Lamb’s insight served as a catalyst for Kestenberg’s subsequent theories of psychophysical development.

At the same time, Lamb’s thinking about adult movement was influenced by his work with Kestenberg.  Lamb had felt for some time that flow did not have equal footing with the other motion factors of weight, time, and space. This conviction grew as Lamb joined Kestenberg’s Child Development Research group, meeting with them on an average of seven times a year for 15 years. His involvement with her longitudinal studies of movement from birth to early adulthood added to his conviction that Flow should be interpreted independently. Lamb described their discovery in the following way: “As babies we compass a full range of Flow variation, then as we grow up this diminishes as we develop Shape and Effort ranges.”

While loss of Flow and gain of Shape/Effort was a trend among adults, Lamb was making other observations.

“In 1963 I had four children between the ages of eight and two. It fascinated me that of the many visitors we had, some were popular with all four while some were treated with indifference. One example was F.C. Lawrence. ‘Pop Pop’ Lawrence, as the children called him, was immensely popular. Others, including some Laban movement people, were not.

“What did Pop Pop Lawrence share with a lot of other popular visitors varying from the young, old, vigorous, decrepid, and with or without children of their own? I tried to observe what was happening….”

To find out what Lamb discovered, and how this influenced his Movement Pattern Analysis profiles of adults, come to the Motus Humanus “Lamb Legacy Lives,” in Golden, Colorado, May 23- 24.

One of the things I have appreciated most about Warren Lamb’s work is how faithfully it adheres to the basic principles of movement set out by Rudolf Laban.

For example, Laban’s taxonomy has two broad categories: effort and space. Effort consists of four motion factors: Space, Weight, Time, and Flow. Qualities of these factors can be combined, to produce a wide variety of dynamic expressions.

Laban’s spatial scheme starts from a simple delineation of the cardinal directions – vertical, horizontal, and sagittal. In natural movement these dimensional inclinations combine, resulting in a wide variety of complex movement shapes.

Laban also identified relationships between effort and space, noting that “the body and its limbs are able to execute certain dynamic nuances in movement towards certain areas in space better than towards others.” This observation underlies his theory of effort/space affinities and disaffinities.

Finally, Laban detected relationships between the motion factors of physical effort and mental processes involved in giving Attention, forming an Intention to act, and Commiting the action.

The Movement Pattern Analysis profile developed by Lamb rests solidly on Laban’s foundational work. Lamb’s lifetime of movement study, however, refines and extends Laban’s ideas.

For example, Lamb discerned relationships not only between effort factors and mental processes, but also between spatial aspects of movement and the decision-making processes of giving Attention, forming an Intention, and making a Commitment to action.

Lamb found that effort/space affinities impact the nature of face-to-face interaction. He discovered a relationship between the complexity of movement and the relative intensity of an individual’s motivation to act.

In short, Lamb took Laban’s movement scheme and gave each part meaning in behavioral terms.

Intrigued? To find out more, come to Golden, Colorado in May for the Motus Humanus advanced seminar, “Lamb Legacy Lives.”

Martha Graham claimed that “movements never lie.” I’d like to believe this. However, contemporary research shows that bodily actions can be used purposefully to mislead the observer.

Thus human movement is both genuine and artificial. If one wishes to understand the nonverbal dimensions of an individual’s behavior, it becomes necessary to distinguish between authentic expressions and actions that are meant to create a certain impression.

Warren Lamb grappled with this problem. As a business consultant, he was often asked to make hiring recommendations among short-listed candidates. Lamb recognized that some candidates interview better than others, simply because they are more adept at image management. In attending closely to nonverbal behavior, Lamb had to find a way to discern honest expressions from actions “put on” for effect.

This led to Lamb to distinguish gestural actions, movements limited to a part of the body, from actions that involved a consistent process of effort or shape change throughout the body as a whole. Lamb dubbed these “Posture-Gesture Mergers” and interpreted such whole-bodied expressions as more genuine than mere gestures.

Paying attention to postural versus gestural expression has been a bedrock of my practice as a movement analyst for many years. I have found that when people are comfortable in a situation and involved or excited about what is being discussed, they tend to integrate gestures with postural actions more consistently.

On the other hand, gesturing and posing also have their uses. Politicians in formal state visits are understandably constrained in their physical behaviors. As a consequence, their true feelings are difficult to discern. Similarly, I once observed interviews with American soldiers who had been abused in Japanese prisoner of war camps. I am sure they felt deeply about their experiences. But they did not merge gesture and posture as they described these experiences. It seemed to me that gestural isolation of movements provided a way to contain painful recollections.

In short, discerning gesture from Posture-Gesture Mergers opens a window on human life and coping mechanisms. For this reason, the opening session of the Motus Humanus celebration of Warren Lamb’s legacy is dedicated to Posture-Gesture Merger and how to identify this significant aspect of movement behavior.

Before I ever met Warren Lamb, I recognized that movement occurs in patterns. While the stream of everyday motion appears to be a turbulent jumble, there is an underlying pattern of change. My pattern is not like your pattern. Everyone’s movement pattern is a little different and consequently individually distinctive, like a fingerprint.

These individual patterns only become apparent over time. To capture an individual’s movement fingerprint requires patience, for the pattern emerges gradually. For this reason, the interview used to collect data for a Movement Pattern Analysis profile is lengthy, running close to two hours.

By now I have been making Movement Pattern Analysis profiles for 35 years. I am no longer a nervous beginner. Nevertheless, I still feel like a beginner at the start of each interview with each new person. It takes time to get used to the individual’s movement. What jumps out at me as a observer during the first moments of the interview seldom turns out to be the most prominent feature of the person’s movement style. I have had to learn to suspend judgment and to be patient.

Most adults have an adequate range of motion, meaning access to all the effort qualities and planes of motion. But some of these kinds of movements occur more frequently than others. This is the key to individual variation. It takes time to accurately discern the relative frequency of different movements. I am seldom able to detect redundancy — the steady recurrence of certain kinds of motions and the relative absence of others — until I have been observing an individual for at least 90 minutes.

Establishing principles of good practice is part of Lamb’s legacy to the movement analysis community. One principle I would like to see more widely adopted is the following:  generalizations about an individual’s character should be based upon an adequate sample of movement behavior. Enough said.

Warren Lamb was one of the most creative people I have ever known, though he was always quite modest about this. Indeed, I believe if asked about his accomplishments, he would have been likely to reply as Sir Issac Newton did –“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Warren was lucky enough to work with two giants, Rudolf Laban, a movement genius, and F.C. Lawrence, one of the first English management consultants. Warren gained his profound understanding of movement by drawing on Laban’s ideas, while his association with Lawrence provided practical experience as a business consultant.

Laban and Lawrence were also lucky to have Warren Lamb. It doesn’t do much good to be a giant, if there is no one to stand on your accomplishments and see further.

Warren was able to see further because he was not slavishly devoted to Laban or Lawrence. Rather, he took their ideas seriously – seriously enough to test them in the crucible of giving advice to hard-headed and hard-hearted business executives. In the process, Lamb enriched the field of movement study by demonstrating how it can be used to illuminate human behavior.

Contemporary movement analysts are the beneficiaries of Lamb’s legacy. Put most simply, this legacy has three parts:

First, Lamb developed an empirical procedure for observing and analyzing movement using Rudolf Laban’s taxonomy.

Secondly, Lamb created a commonsensical framework for interpreting the significance of what he observed.

Thirdly, the connections he made between observations and their interpretations are both straightforward and transparent.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Motus Humanus will celebrate Lamb’s legacy with an advanced seminar focusing on his discoveries and the standards of good practice embodied in his life work.